Science Fiction & Fantasy author
I have posted about many of the books I consider useful. So this post is sort of a gathering of those posts in one place. Now you don’t have to search about for them.
Grammar and revision:
Eats, Shoots and Leaves
A Writer’s Reference
Spell Friendly Dictionaries
Creative inspiration:
A Writer’s Book of Days
Lu Chi’s Wen Fu
Lu Chi’s Wen Fu 2
The Worst Case Scenario
Good books to read:
The Catcher in the Rye
Tale of Two Cities
You’ve Got to Read This
What’s upstairs? Take your reader up those stairs, barefoot. Let them feel every creak, rough edge, small nail poking up. Make each step an adventure in itself. Then show them what is on the second floor (or third floor, or in the attic). But make is a slow trip where every word is ultimately connected to the object or place you will take them to.
I recently started rereading Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye. Even though I know where Holden Caulfield is in his journey of self-deception and punishment, I still get caught up with the slow reveal of his anger. Salinger in the first three sentences tells the reader exactly where Caulfield is and how he has yet to find balance. Still, I find myself walking along beside this struggling character, listening to what he hates in his effort to avoid what he loves. That ongoing chatter the first person narrative provides that begins so truly as teenage angst before it begins its slow, slick slide into, well read and see for yourself.
Every writer should read it for the lesson alone of how to create a character that tells all while he thinks he has hidden all his best secrets, the quintessential unreliable narrator. Every reader over the age of 15 should read this book. It’s makes one grin at first hearing him say all the things every polite individual wishes he could belt out so unconsciously and honestly. Somewhere along the line, the reader comes to a realization: Holden is not chatting at length for every teenager who wishes he could speak his mind so easily, but for his own salvation, his own need to divorce himself from his shortcomings, his desire for forgiveness, presumably from the reader, but in reality from himself. Reader or writer, read it, read it more than once.
You’ve Got To Read This is an anthology supplying short stories that are the favorite reads of some of the finest writers of the 20th century. Every writer should be reading, especially the most exemplary works of well-written prose. “Goodbye, My Brother” by John Cheever is one of my favorites due to the family dynamics it portrays with simple, straightforward narration, and it is introduced by Allan Gurganus.
This book, though not a recent publication, is a great start for the writers looking to learn by reading. The short introductions given by the author that selected each piece adds to the reading of each work. Not only do I get to read a great short story, but I also get to understood what drew the accomplished writer to be moved by the work and name it as one of his or her favorites.
So track down this text and sit down for that occasional short read that you can examine both for the writing skill itself as well as for what an establish writer might find worthwhile in it.
As said in Lu Chi’s Wen Fu, “When cutting an axe handle with an axe,
surely the model is at hand.”
Think about a dream you had recently (if you remember your dreams). What about it carried the strongest emotional tug. Focus in on that and describe it with as much detail as you can. Try to recapture everything that carried emotion, evoked emotion or still creates a stir in your mind. If you are not a person who remembers your dreams, how about a day dream? The main point is to locate the strongest point of emotion and put that across.
Dig out an old photo of when you were a kid. Write about the moment it was taken. Imagine the image in black and white whether it is or not. Keep your descriptions of colors in the grey scale. Go for the shadows, the bright spots; enrich your description by looking at the sharpness of the lines, the feelings the picture evokes and the story it is ready to tell.